"How and how much we value our emotional lives..."

So it's been a couple of weeks. I apologize for this. It's been kind of crazy. I've been teaching English of course, been on a few trips and always in deep contemplation about things. For the most part, I've been reflecting on how quickly this year (2011) has gone, and all the wonderful and not so wonderful things that have happened.

The second week of November, I visited a friend up in Taipei. I'm not a fan of big cities, but Taipei has a certain charm about it. We went to a restaurant called the Lavender Garden, which was pretty interesting. Then, we headed to the 101. It was "cold" in Taipei, at least colder than the weather we are used to in Taiwan. Not nearly as cold as say, upstate New York this time of year. I have to admit, I won't miss the snow, especially the tedious scraping of ice in the morning. The picture to the right is taken at the Palace Museum in Taipei. They had an exhibit on Louis XIV, (who is one of my favorite rulers in France. :) This definitely counts as one of those wonderful points of 2011.

This past weekend I went to a town called Jiji with a few coworkers. It was absolutely beautiful. The whole time I was there I was listening to an album by Rebecca Correia. She is an artist from Rochester who I started listening to my senior year of college. I think the frankness in her lyrics fit perfectly with the beauty of the mountains. It also brought me back to memories of senior year in college....

The not so wonderful time of 2011 (and to whom this blog post is dedicated to) was the lost of my dearest professor, Dr. Kiskis. It's funny because just this past week, I told a few of my students how often I correspond with a professor from college. I just couldn't see it any other way. I really enjoy talking with him, and our meeting was mostly because of Dr. Kiskis's death. But doing all this teaching and being in a foreign country brings back the memory of him, I would say, almost everyday. He died in May, and right before I made my decision to come to Taiwan, I sent him an email. The basic message of it was, "What should I do?" He equivocated, as usual, something that I had come to love about him. That and his skepticism about everything.  His response was:

"So.  Both, I think, have benefits.  It will, of course, depend on what you are most interested in at this point in your time as a student and as a teacher.  I won't presume to tell you what you should do.  I think that you will be able to have success at both -- though in different way and for different reasons." 


Doesn't seem like much, but this was the most important advice I had gotten about this decision. And I realized/ am still realizing that education in its barest form or principle should make lives better and more fulfilling. The best teacher is not someone who knows a lot or even has a lot of a experience, but is someone who can take both of those things into the classroom. He was that person to me and, I'm sure, to a lot of others. Teachers can and should be wrong. He was never afraid to admit that. His comprehensive knowledge of English rivaled his knowledge about life.

I hope I can do that someday. I came to Taiwan partly to make myself a better teacher. To get experience to bring home with me, ultimately, to do what Dr. Kiskis did for 30 years of his life.

As always he closed his email with---

"I don't know if that really helps.  But...it's what I can do."




He always offered that as comfort at the end of an email, encouraging, yet skeptical that he really ever did anything in the first place. We both know that he did. His biggest message was to value our emotional lives and not to turn away from who are---he would think that who we are and our emotional lives are the same.

Anyway, the wonderful and not so wonderful things of 2011 kind of balance each other out in a weird way. I've met new and wonderful people, despite my lost. I've smiled more times than I've cried. I have wonderful and spectacular friends and family that keep me going....

Yes, Chinese! Yes, Yes, Chinese!

I can't believe it's November already. I have been Taiwan for nearly 3 months and it's starting to feel like home. Some days I forget that I am in a foreign country, but it's rainy days like today that remind me. It has been raining for the past two days almost nonstop. But it's actually a pleasant feeling: I've been lounging around watching movies and eating good food. And doing some teaching, too.

 Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my persona as a teacher. I've come to the conclusion that teaching is mostly acting. I make grammar and phonics sound more exciting than they are, even if I really do find them exciting :) To the right is a picture of me as a crazy rockstar on Halloween with one of my youngest students.

I think I am getting plenty of good teaching experiences here. Sometimes, I have classes with younger kids following ones with older kids and vice versa. My teaching certification is for middle and high school but I think that the experience is younger kids is useful, too. The language barrier can be a problem with the youngins' but using body language is a great way around that.

The next few months will be different and rather hectic. I am starting a Chinese language course at a nearby university. It's actually a pretty rigorous course, and I choose to take it because I want to leave Taiwan with a little Chinese under my belt. I can't justify coming to a foreign country and relying on everyone to know English or have others translate for me. If we run into a foreigner in the U.S. we may not even consider that they don't know English very well. Here, though, everyone anticipates  foreigners to know little to no Chinese. Fortunately, when I go to stores, etc. there is always at least one person there that speaks English. Anyway, I'm going to put a lot of work into learning the language here and trying to communicate with the natives as much as I can. It's so easy to forget that I'm still a guest in this country, and I want to be as respectful as possible. This mentality is so different than in my classes. We are supposed to use only English, but sometimes the students slip and say something in Chinese. I made up a rap to promote English speaking in the classroom, "No, Chinese. No, no, Chinese!" Sometimes the students will get lazy and just give me the answer instead of reading the whole sentence in the book. So I made up a chant, "READ THE WHOLE SENTENCE! READ THE WHOLE SENTENCE!" The little kids like it and they think I'm goofy. And they'd be right...

So, I'm told that it will get cooler here eventually. But I  have yet to feel it. It's still miserably hot and humid some days, but I bought two winter jackets just in case. December seems so close and it's still in the 70s and 80s everyday. I'm not complaining. I've always preferred to be hot rather than cool. Despite the rain and wet streets, I'm really enjoying my time here, and I don't think I reflect on this enough. For one, the people here are really great. For instance, when a person in America wants something we usually just say, "can I please have some of your cake?" The person will respond with either a yes or no answer, maybe sometimes making up an excuse as to why they cannot share. In Taiwan, if a person wants something, they try to get the other person to offer it. They may say how delicious the cake looks and smells, ask you where you got it, and ask if it's tasty. Until finally you get sort of frustrated and say, "do you want to try some?" All you can do is laugh because to them this is the polite way of asking, whereas Americans are more forthcoming...